Classroom Intellectual Composition and Academic Achievement

Abstract

Assuming that the intellectual level of the classroom affects the quality of learning environments, it is argued that separating students into homogeneous educational frameworks enriches the environment for high-resource students and impoverishes it for low-resource students, whereas the converse occurs under heterogeneous mixing. Academic achievement consequently will be affected. This argument was subjected to an empirical analysis in two Israeli samples, one ethnically and socioeconomically heterogeneous, the other socially homogeneous. First, presuppositions concerning the impact of three dimensions of student-body composition on academic achievement were probed. It was found that (a) the intellectual component of student-body composition outweighs both ethnic and socioeconomic components; (b) classroom composition is more effective than school composition; and (c) classroom intellectual level is more effective than its variance. Subsequently, two hypotheses were supported: classroom intellectual composition positively affects the student’s academic achievement, and compositional quality and personal ability interact (i.e., low-resource students are more sensitive than high-resource students to compositional quality). An educational implication follows: In separation, the low-resource students’ loss is greater than the high-resource students’ profit, and in mixing, the high-resource students’ loss is smaller than the low-resource students’ gain.